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Thursday, October 1, 2015

Hidden from the world in German higher education

New
Testament scholarship within the German system of higher learning works like
this: You have to slog your way through the whole modern intellectual history of
a topic and write at least two monographs with approximately 5000 footnotes.
The second book is your postdoctoral thesis. At the end of this phase of
research you will be rewarded with an academic title called “PD”
(“Privatdozent”). With this title you still have one letter less than a
PhD-holder in Anglophone countries—not to mention, that this person is very
likely to be 15 years younger than you at this point. Perhaps the reason for
this stony path is that, in the collective memory of Germans, the image of a
widely educated scholar looks like this:

The generation
of the so called “große Gelehrte” to whom Bultmann belongs is to this day very
influential. Especially in the case of Rudolf Bultmann young, ambitious New
Testament scholars have to deal with the fact that this professor from Marburg set
the agenda in New Testament research for several decades until now. In
modification of a famous quote one could say: New Testament scholarship
consists of a series of footnotes to Bultmann. The topic of my doctoral thesis
is no exception. I, like many others, am still wrestling with the consequences
of his insights. Taking serious the end of the “Leben-Jesu-Forschung”, Bultmann
focused resolutely on the synoptic tradition, its origin, and its pre-literate
forms. Some of his students, above all Helmut Koester, followed up on the trace
of the synoptic tradition in various early Christian writings, including the
Gospel of Thomas and the letters of Paul. The research interest was in
pre-literate, catechetic collections of early Christian tradition and in the
question whether Paul and other early Christian authors included such
collections in their writings. If so, the early dates and perhaps even the
historical reliability of the primitive Gospel tradition could be proven. As a
consequence the analysis of parallel tradition aroused new interest in the
historical Jesus. And New Testament research turned to the letters of Paul
hoping to find sayings of Jesus who match the criterion of multiple
attestations. Programmatic in this field was Dale C. Allison’s influential
article on “The Pauline Epistles and the Synoptic Gospels: The Pattern of
Parallels” (NTS 28), published in 1982.

Often
discussed analogies to synoptic tradition can be found, inter alia, in Romans 12:14-21 and 14:14, 20. The passage in Romans
12 seems to allude to a part of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus commands
non-retaliation and to love one’s enemies. Romans 14 on the other hand deals
with purity. Paul here declares, that there is no impurity in “Kyrios Jesus”
and hereby supposedly evokes the disputation passage in Mark 7:1-23. Traces of
an “original Jesus tradition” have been claimed for this Pauline passage as it
seemed necessary that Paul would use the authority of Jesus in a question as
important as the suspension of the food laws. Following this thesis however,
the lack of an original saying of Jesus seems all the more conspicuous. The
missing command to love one´s enemy in Rom 12 is significant. Instead Paul
cites Prov 25:21-22 as an example of how the congregation should deal with
enemies! Wouldn´t it at this point have been much easier for the apostle to
just cite Jesus and use his authority, had he possessed a such command from his
master? And exactly how much is the criteria “multiple attestation” worth, when
Paul in these cases doesn’t even mention Jesus? Even the only two unmistakable
references to words of Jesus in 1 Cor 7:10-11 and 9:14 are actually just
paraphrases. Paul creates his own context to use these words in and even
changes the content of what the Lord had commanded. Paradoxically he sees
himself authorized to do so by the lord Jesus Christ himself, since he himself
in Jesus spirit can command independently (cf. 1 Cor 7:25,40; 14:37; Phlm 8-9).
One could even go as far as to say, that Paul uses the authority of the lord against the Jesus tradition.

And so the
question remains, how much knowledge did Paul really have about the Jesus
tradition? Furthermore, was at all important to him? He was surely not
interested in Jesus of Nazareth in any modern historical sense and he seems to
care very little for Jesus’ authoritative teachings.

Following Bultmann
on this matter, Paul was much more convinced about the significance of the
risen Christ, the healing implications of this event for the whole of humanity,
and its overall influence on Christian living. It is precisely through this
lens that Paul views the Jesus tradition. This circumstance raises the
hermeneutic question as to whether it is even possible to examine the Pauline
letters with an interest in the historical Jesus. As Paul’s letters follow a
completely different agenda, on our search for traces of the historical Jesus
do we not much more risk dragging our own interests into those texts?

Being a
newcomer and researching, hidden from the world, in German higher education, I was able to meditate on and investigate these and other
exegetical, theological and philosophical questions and surprisingly, many of my
insights turned out to be very close to the theses of this famous man shown
above. So I find myself asking: Are we living in a Bultmann-revival-era?

Christine, thanks for this post and for giving us a window into your research!

I noticed that you didn't say anything about Paul's explicit quotation of Jesus' words over the bread and wine in the so-called "words of institution" (1 Cor 11:24-25). Do you think these are relevant to Jesus research? If so, how do you factor them in to your understanding of Paul's use of the Jesus tradition? Any thoughts on their striking parallels with Luke's account of the Last Supper (Luke 22:19-22)? Thanks!

Thank you, Brant! This is a really interesting question. Indeed, I think the quotation of Jesus' words in 1Cor 11 is an exception within Paul's attitude to refer to the Lord and to allude to Jesus tradition. But to my mind, this exception results from the fact that Paul quotes an early Christian tradition to which V.23b belongs, too. Jesus' words are included in this Christian tradition. This tradition was the way in which early Christians traced back their ritual to the earthly Jesus and to a particular event in his life. However, the historical background lies to my mind in a more general feature of Jesus' activity. The tradition of the last supper is somehow paradigmatic, and it is a very old tradition, as is seen in the striking parallels with Luke's account. In this sense the words of institution are very relevant to Jesus research as well as to the history of early Christianity.Regarding Paul, it is striking that even though Paul depends on other Christians from whom he received the tradition, in his introduction he directly refers to authority of the Lord (cf. V.23a "I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you"). I think with this he wants to stress the close relationship between himself and the Lord, neglecting other authorities in the chain of tradition. I hope I do not overinterprete the introduction. But taking into account that the words of institution could be regarded as eyewitness testimony, to my opinion Paul tries to downplay this.

Hi Frederik, of course 1 Cor 15:3-5 demand a further explanation. What is striking here is the fact this text passage is introduced by Paul with nearly the same phrase as in 1 Cor 11:23: for what I received I passed on to you. Only, in the case of 1 Cor 15:3-5 Paul does not refer to the Lord as the origin of the tradition. Paul presents this tradition as something that he has received from other apostles. Here he doesn't mind depending on other early Christian teachers (unlike 1 Cor 11,23!). The reason for this might be the argumentative strategy of the quoted tradition about Jesus' death and resurrection. Paul wants to demonstrate that his gospel is consistent with a broad majority of apostles and eyewitnesses of the resurrected Jesus. Within this tradition, Paul reveals the key elements of his knowledge about the earthly Jesus, namely that Jesus died and was buried. Thus regarding the earthly Jesus, it is his death that matters most for Paul. To my mind this sounds again like Bultmann, but he is right in this case.

Christine, thanks so much for this. In my last two projects, I came to the conclusion as well that Gospels scholarship especially is essentially *still* immensely indebted to Bultmann. Although I, like many other kittens taking a swipe at a tiger, have argued against aspects of his work, I'm absolutely in awe of his brilliance and continued influence.

Many thanks, Chris! I agree. Although Bultmann has not definitely answered the question how the synoptic tradition emerged and developed, the very idea of a "history of the synoptic tradition" is brilliant....

In his book on James, Richard Bauckham suggests that we need to “shift our interest from identifying allusions to the sayings of Jesus (which has been the focus of most study in this area) to identifying creative re­expression of the wisdom of Jesus by his disciple the sage James.” I wonder if this might be the case for Paul also.

Yes, the final result of my book gets very close to this shift. The special character of Paul's reception of Jesus and Jesus tradition is, however, Paul's overriding concern in the risen, exalted Lord who is now present in the congregation through his apostle. From Paul's point of view, this even overrules actual Jesus sayings (cf. 1Cor 9:14). In order to elaborate these and other relevant aspects I have tried to combine a diachronic view on traces of Jesus tradition with a synchronic view on Paul's processing and receiving Jesustradition.

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Le Donne, Keith, Pitre, Crossley, Jacobi, Rodríguez

James Crossley (PhD, Nottingham) is Professor of Bible, Society, and Politics at St. Mary's University, Twickenham, London. In addition to most things historical Jesus, his interests typically concern Jewish law and the Gospels, the social history of biblical scholarship, and the reception of the Bible in contemporary politics and culture. He is co-executive editor of the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus.

Christine Jacobi studied protestant theology and art history in Berlin and Heidelberg. She is research associate at the chair of exegesis and theology of the New Testament and apocryphal writings. She completed her dissertation at the Humboldt-University of Berlin in 2014. She is the author of Jesusüberlieferung bei Paulus? Analogien zwischen den echten Paulusbriefen und den synoptischen Evangelien (BZNW 213), Berlin: de Gruyter 2015. Christine Jacobi is a member of the „August-Boeckh-Antikezentrum“ and the „Berliner Arbeitskreis für koptisch-gnostische Schriften“.

Chris Keith (PhD, Edinburgh) is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity and Director of the Centre for the Social-Scientific Study of the Bible at St. Mary’s University, Twickenham, London.

Anthony Le Donne (PhD, Durham) is Associate Professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary. He is the author/editor of seven books. He is the co-founder of the Jewish-Christian Dialogue and Sacred Texts Consultation and the co-executive editor of the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus.

Brant Pitre (PhD, University of Notre Dame) is Professor of Sacred Scripture at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans. Among other works, he is the author of Jesus, the Tribulation, and the End of the Exile (Mohr-Siebeck/Baker Academic, 2005), and Jesus and the Last Supper (Eerdmans, 2015). He is particularly interested in the relationship between Jesus, Second Temple Judaism, and Christian origins.

Rafael Rodríguez (PhD, Sheffield) is Professor of New Testament at Johnson University. He has published a number of books and essays on social memory theory, oral tradition, the Jesus tradition, and the historical Jesus, as well as on Paul and Pauline tradition. He also serves as co-chair of the Bible in Ancient and Modern Media section of the Society of Biblical Literature.

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Jesus and the Last Supper

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Structuring Early Christian Memory: Jesus in Tradition, Performance and Text